eBay has taken the No 1 spot in a new ranking of the the top brands in social media, carried out by Yomego.
The online auction and shopping site was just ahead of Apple in second place, Google (third), BlackBerry (fourth) and Amazon (fifth) in the inaugural 50 Top Brands in Social Media league table, which is based on Yomego’s Social Media Reputation (SMR) Index.
In sixth position, Gucci is the highest-ranked non-tech company, followed by Ford (seventh) and MTV (eighth). Samsung (ninth) and Yahoo (tenth) rounded out the top 10.
The fact that eBay topped the index was attributed to its long-standing engagement with customers through forums, corporate blogging, Twitter and Facebook, and the speed with which it adapts to new social media offerings. It was also noted that the company takes a social approach to internal communications, featuring blogs, forums and discussions boards on the company intranet.
Each of the brands in the top 50 was given a ranking based on its SMR score, which measures the social media noise around a brand (how many people are talking about it) with its popularity (whether what those people are saying is positive or negative). It then adds a ‘recency’ score, which provides a topical adjustment (so a brand that is being talked about now has a higher recency score than one talked about six months ago).
Human analysis is then applied to each score to ensure it is accurate (to take into account sentiment such as sarcasm or slang that could be wrongly interpreted by an automated system) and to analyse relative influence of different channels. The brand is then given an overall SMR score out of 100.
eBay came out with a score of 92.29, while Apple managed 88.61 and Google notched up 87.00.
“This research shows that brands that rank the highest are those that engage with customers through the right channels, listen to what they are saying, and respond to them transparently and effectively,” said David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian, whose social media analytics tool SM2 provided the social media data and analysis for the index.
“Surprisingly, brand giant Coca-Cola, which is ranked in first position in the Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking system, has come in at 24th,” he added. “Even though the company has implemented a number of social media tools to engage with customers, both consumers and businesses, it goes to show how important it is to engage with their audience in the right way.”
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
